


The Great Detective

by TheVulpineHero1



Series: The Sisters of Ebimanyou Town [2]
Category: One Hundred Percent Orange Juice, QP Shooting - Dangerous!! (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Humour, Natsumi and Mei are sisters again, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25465438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVulpineHero1/pseuds/TheVulpineHero1
Summary: Mei isn't afraid of a little trouble. But when a local crime lord delivers a new case to her doorstep, she has no idea how much havoc it's going to wreak with her, and her family...
Series: The Sisters of Ebimanyou Town [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145114
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quincy (QuincyUSA)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuincyUSA/gifts).



> This follows on from the other standalone Mei & Natsumi fanfic I did, and retains the idea that they're sisters. It was written for Natsumi Day (23/7/2020).

Another day, another donut. That was all that you could expect from life as a detective in the city that never sleeps.

Well. It was technically a _box_ of donuts, rather than just the one, and the city was in fact a town, and the town actually did sleep, at pretty regular intervals. It was iffy if Mei even counted as a detective, if you really wanted to quibble about things.

But like many detectives, she had a hat. And that was what _really_ mattered. Nobody could take that away from her.

This and other interesting monologues floated through her mind as she spiralled, with all the grace of a bulldog in oversized slippers, towards the gutter. The run-off water embraced her like a mistress, and so did the stone; she felt something sticky across her forehead as she pulled her face out of the drink. The force of the blow had rattled her bones, and maybe her brain. She rested her cheek on the curb – she had just enough forethought to use her hat as a cushion, because who knew what had been on the street – and thought, momentarily, about how she had gotten herself into this predicament.

* * *

It all began with organised crime, which, as everybody knew, was the sneakiest kind of crime.

To be entirely fair, Yuki didn’t do it because it was sneaky. Her plans generally involved high drama, giant robots, and explosives. Sneaking wasn’t really her thing. She just liked her crime to be _tidy_. She was going to take over the world someday, and she didn’t want her seven billion prospective subjects to think she was some kind of slob who didn’t even tidy her crimes. She had a reputation to think about.

This, and other minor misunderstandings about what organised crime actually _was_ , were why Yuki was generally considered more of a visionary than a legitimate villain. Yes, she ran a few minor gambling rings, but she’d never quite had the heart to enforce the ‘win too much and they might find you at the bottom of the nearest river’ part of the equation. Why did she have to? The house always won. The games were literally designed to make sure that, by all known laws of probability, she would end up richer than any given winner. Besides, it didn’t seem sporting. She was a gambler herself, and knew how it felt.

Likewise, she’d bought up shares in several local businesses, and cackled to herself when they paid her a dividend for doing nothing. Yes, it did demonstrate the sins of sloth and greed, but it was also just how capitalism worked. Really, if she just cut back on the giant robots and the correspondingly giant explosives, she might have passed for an upstanding member of society.

This, among other reasons, was why she was not immediately tackled to the ground upon entering the vicinity of QP’s school, and why she was allowed to skulk from corridor to corridor until she ended up in the sociology classroom.

Contrary to popular belief, there were better places to skulk than sociology classrooms, although they were few and far between – alleyways, chiefly, and sometimes warehouses, which to Yuki lacked a certain _je ne sais quoi_. What they did have was boxes – boxes, in absolute abundance. People in Ebimanyou Town apparently bought a lot of crates and left them in conveniently atmospheric but illogical locations. It was a culture thing.

But she hadn’t come to the sociology classroom to skulk. She had come for business.

Sitting at the teacher’s desk (that had a flask of whiskey in the bottom-right draw, which was almost certainly a little emptier than when she’d checked it last) was Mei, the premier source of rumours, scuttlebutt, and hearsay around Ebimanyou Town. She made it her business to have the dirt on everybody and everything, and then to air that dirt liberally in a school newspaper that virtually nobody actually read. It was an ideal arrangement; not only was her desire to dish salacious details satisfied, but her kneecaps remained mostly intact.

She looked at Yuki. She looked at her lithe figure, her boyish shirt, the habitual sneer she wore on her face. She looked at the half-empty pack of smokes tucked into her breast pocket. She looked at her own shoes and discovered the laces were untied, and nonchalantly ducked beneath the desk to tie them. She stayed under the desk for a good, long time. Almost as if she were hiding.

“I want some information,” Yuki said, sauntering towards the desk. She found herself quite pleased by this development. She was rather of the opinion that people _should_ hide when they saw her coming, as a mark of respect. It was like genuflecting when you walked into a church, complete with the whole ‘praying for salvation’ schtick. “And I hear you’re just the girl to provide it.” She counted to five in her head; when the fifth second passed with no answer, she lowered her voice to a husky purr. “Hey. _Look at me when I’m talking to you._ ”

The ‘or else’ was implied. It was always implied. You never didn’t imply it, and it was considered clumsy or even childish to say the ‘or else’ out loud. The ‘or else’ was all-powerful, provided that it was never seen, and thus qualified as a monster from a b-tier horror film by sheer technicality.

Mei, who was well-informed enough to know who she was dealing with, inched out of the table to stare into the abyss. The abyss was staring back, and it had one hell of a mean-looking smirk on its face. She bit her lip. She summoned her courage. And she made peace with the idea that she _probably_ wasn’t getting out of here without getting her ass kicked.

“I… I have prices! No hand-outs!” she declared, bravely standing up for what she believed in.

“Oh, right. Sure. I’ll get you a pocketful of candy or whatever it is you want,” the cat said dismissively, although only because information was not a thing that would fall out of Mei’s pockets if she held her by the ankles and shook. “Now get out from under the desk. I got something to show you.”

With a single sweep of her hand (that she had no doubt practised endlessly at home, for such smooth motion did not come without dedicated effort) she spread out three glossy photographs on the table. Mei picked them up, one by one, for examination.

“Did you actually go and get these developed? Wow, that’s super old fashioned. Why not just send me the jpegs? You know how to email, right?” Mei asked conversationally. “I’ve got a contact address, y’know. I made business cards.”

“Look, it’s for aesthetic purposes! Geez. Kids today have no _style_. This is why you wouldn’t make it as a member of a criminal organisation. Not that’d I’d know anything about that,” Yuki sniffed. “Look at what’s _in_ the photos, brat.”

Mei looked, and .5 seconds later said, “Well, it’s QP.”

“Of _course_ it’s QP! Why would I go to some weird kid for information if it wasn’t about somebody who’s literally in the same class as you?!” Yuki shouted. She seemed to be having fun. “What’s different about her?”

Upon further inspection, the pictures showed QP wearing a mask. Not much of a mask, to be absolutely fair – only a domino mask, which didn’t really do anything to protect her identity. People did not identify QP by her eyes. They identified her by her tail, or her yelling, or her habit of causing excessive amount of property damage in her day-to-day life.

She was also wearing a crimson scarf, which somehow managed to billow behind her dramatically even though Mei was pretty sure it hadn’t been at all windy recently. Maybe she’d fixed it in place with hairspray. You never knew with that dog.

“She’s in some kind of superhero get-up,” Mei said.

“Right. See, I don’t know when she started playing at being a cape. But it’s been brought to my attention that she seems to have a new _nemesis,_ ” Yuki explained, drawing out the last word with a hiss that could only belong to a cat. “And the _reason_ it’s been brought to my attention is that two of my frie – ahem, goons, have gotten caught up in the crossfire. Multiple times.”

Having honed her ability to say stupid things by way of long effort and practice, Mei saw no reason to stop now. “You sure you’re not just jealous? Last I checked, you and QP also had that weird archenemy thing going on.”

“Say that again.” Yuki’s voice, ordinarily smooth and low for a woman, suddenly became sunshine and light – but the kind that usually happens between ants and magnifying glasses. “Go on. Say it again. See what happens.”

Mei decided that this was one of those rhetorical instructions she wasn’t supposed to follow, like advertising slogans and anything said by her geography teacher. “A-anyway. Why do you need my help? It looks like you already have all the info you need. You have pictures and everything.”

Actually, when she thought about it, her last case had involved a client telling her a new rumour she really should have known about. It seemed weird for an information broker to consistently be the one receiving the information, but maybe that was just how the job worked. You got the information, you sold it on for a profit, like banks with debt.

“I have _almost_ all the information. What I _need_ is the identity of her nemesis. I don’t have a picture, and from what my goons said, their stupid villain costume is a lot better than than that mutt’s mask, so they can’t get a visual.” Yuki shifted uncomfortably. “As much as I’d love to just wreck QP and solve the problem that way, taking on that dumb dog is more trouble than it’s worth. So I’ll wreck her new ‘nemesis’ instead.”

“You know what they say. The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Mei said sagely, quoting the wisdom given unto her by children’s television shows.

“Whatever,” Yuki sniffed, taking out a long, thin cigarette and reaching into her pocket for a lighter. “Here’s the deal. I want full info on this idiot she’s playing with. Name, address, age, how many pets they have, the works. You turn it over to me, and you aren’t responsible for what happens after that. We never met, and we don’t know each other. Capiche?”

“Out of curiosity,” Mei said slowly, “what if I said no?”

“Well. I never considered it. People don’t generally say no to me,” the cat replied ominously. “They usually have too much to live for.”

“Noted,” Mei said cheerfully, having forgotten her emergency buzzer at home. “Well, I suppose I could take on the case.”

“Attagirl,” Yuki said, sneering, and lit her cigarette.

This was a miscalculation, because ever since somebody had burned off the metalwork teacher’s eyebrows off with a blowtorch, the school had been obliged to review its fire safety code and had found that randomly putting sprinklers everywhere was the quickest way to fend off lawyers. One of them was in the sociology classroom, and it immediately began to simulate what it would be like to stand under a waterfall with a colander for a hat.

When the first drop of water hit her, Yuki snarled. “Damn it! Quick, what’s your price?”

“I get twenty five a day, plus expenses.”

“Here! Keep the change. I’ll pay the rest on delivery. Don’t let me down, kid,” the cat said, throwing some money down with a sweep of her arm and running from the room, traumatised by memories of detentions past.

Mei looked at the money, blinked, and then shouted: “Hey! I meant _dollars_ , not _cents_!”

There was no reply. So Mei picked up twenty cents, two buttons and a bottle-top, and ran out of the room to ponder her newest case before the teachers found her.

* * *

Much like active volcanoes create fertile soil, the sudden sprinkler attack turned out to have an unexpected upside.

Firstly, it was an excuse to trudge into the house dripping wet and looking sorry for herself, which was a great way to attract sympathy from her immediate family. It also meant she got first dibs on the shower, and could enjoy the warm water for as long as she pleased.

But most importantly, it meant that Natsumi – who in Mei’s opinion was the world’s most excellent sister and might have been among the world’s most excellent people, period – would be waiting for her when she came out, armed with a hairdryer and a gentle smile. There was simply no greater pleasure in Mei’s life than sitting down in her warm, comfy pyjamas and letting Natsumi dry her hair for her while she considered her next move. She hesitated to use the word ‘sublime’, but there was no better way to describe the experience.

“Did you get any clients today?” Natsumi asked, setting down the hairdryer and reaching for a brush.

“I did.”

“Oh, how wonderful. Was it Syura-chan again? I’m so glad you two get along.”

Syura was Mei’s most regular customer by a country mile, something which had caused her to skyrocket in Natsumi’s esteem. As far as the chef was concerned, they were the best of friends – which, Mei supposed, was true, insofar as Syura could really be said to be friends with anybody. As a proud gamer girl, programmer and dabbler in the niche subcultures of the world, the redhead didn’t really _do_ standard interpersonal relationships as Mei knew and understood them.

“Not Syura this time. New client.”

“That’s lovely. Do I know them?”

“I hope not,” Mei grumbled. She didn’t know how a meeting between Natsumi and Yuki would go, and she didn’t want to find out. “Should be an easy case, though.”

After all, it wasn’t as though QP was hard to track. That dog barely knew the meaning of the word ‘covert’, and almost certainly didn’t know how to spell it; when she wasn’t zooming around yelling, she was playing at high drama. Nothing QP did stayed secret for very long.

The _other_ reason the case would be easy was that Mei had no intention of doing more than the bare minimum. She’d been soaked, bullied, and paid with no more than a pocketful of shrapnel and some vague threats, which were not conditions that inspired loyalty to her current client. Yuki might, if she was lucky, get the information she wanted, but more likely she’d be getting nothing, and if she wasn’t careful she might just get what was coming to her.

As Mei thought about the nature of karma (and how she might encourage the wheel to turn a little bit faster), Natsumi began to brush her hair, humming to herself as she did. Music wasn’t something that Natsumi had any particular talent at, but she was fond of singing to herself. It seemed to help her think. Mei considered it charming, although her contentious relationship with the school choir might have coloured her view slightly.

(The school choir was full of students with big, beautiful voices and big, beautiful ambitions. It was also full of drama and interpersonal rivalries, on which Mei had made a steady dime. There was a common joke in the student body that there were no knives to be found in the cafeteria, but you could find at least one stuck in any choir member’s back.)

“Come to think of it,” Mei said after a while, “you might be able to help me. You hang around with QP a lot, right?”

“Mmhm. Q-chan is a fellow dessert-lover, and she’s always such fun to be around.”

Mei very bravely said nothing. She’d recently had a small but extremely violent altercation with QP over a disagreement about the nature of QP and Natsumi’s relationship. Mei had thought QP was dating Natsumi, and, in a bout of sisterly rage, confronted her. QP apparently hadn’t even considered the possibility, but wasn’t really in the habit of shying away from a fight. It had ended messily, at least for Mei. As a result, she had chosen to refrain from commenting on QP and Natsumi’s relationship dynamics for the foreseeable future.

“Has she been doing anything weird lately? Like, running around dressed as a superhero, for instance?”

“I don’t know. Is your new case about Q-chan?”

“When are they _not_?” Mei grumbled, a little sourly. “All I ever do is dredge up info on that dog.”

Natsumi made a mysterious, but satisfied, kind of noise. “Hmhm. You’re like an expert on Q-chan nowadays. I’m a little jealous.”

Mei rolled her eyes. “That I know so much about her?”

“That she takes up so much of your attention.” Natsumi’s brush halted, and she began to toy with a loose curl in Mei’s hair, twirling it in her fingertips. “You’re always talking about her, you know. Or asking about her.”

“Wha…” Mei’s voice trailed off into horrified realisation. “Wait, no, you’re getting the wrong–”

“That’s probably why you get along with Syura-chan. You have the same _interests_. I think… she’ll be stiff competition, but you can do it if you try. Fight hard, Mei.”

She turned, jerking Natsumi’s hands away from her hair. “No, no, listen. I’m not interested in that dog at all. It’s just that–”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve found somebody like that in your life,” Natsumi said sagely. It would be so easy to shout over her, but that quiet way she spoke – it didn’t seem fair. “And QP is very cute. But as your sister, I can’t help feeling just a little bit jealous… and maybe a little sad. It feels like you’re getting closer and closer to Q-chan, and further away from me.”

It was at this point that Mei realised that sometimes, having ‘pick a fight’ as your default first step in conflict resolution was not always a blessing. She couldn’t pick a fight with her own sister. But everything that Natsumi was saying was getting under her skin in the worst possible way. She felt angry, panicked. Her fists had started to itch.

“You’re wrong,” she said, and the effort she needed to hold her voice level made it feel cold. “Sis, you’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She didn’t realise she had stood up until she started running, and she didn’t realise she was running until she was unlocking the front door. She had just enough presence of mind to snag her coat and hat before she stormed out of the house. There was a deathly silence in the room after she left it.

“Oh dear. I think she’s mad,” Natsumi said.

It seemed like a good assumption. After all, there was nobody to tell her otherwise.

* * *

It took about thirty seconds of fresh air before Mei realised that, on the list of extremely stupid things to do, storming out of the house in your pyjamas and slippers was pretty up there.

To begin with, it robbed a little bit of the drama from her self-imposed exodus. Clothes didn’t necessarily make the man, but they sometimes made the moment, and at the current moment she felt more than a little ridiculous. Slippers were also not optimal shoes for slogging it across the city. Even slippers with penguins on them.

She had no plan on where to go, or what to do. She didn’t think any of her friends were crazy enough to let her sleep over with no notice, much less clothe and feed her. And although Red and Blue would certainly track her down to assuage her loneliness and potentially let her huddle with them for warmth, it would take them a good few hours at the very least.

Her only option, realistically speaking, was to occupy herself for a few hours and then quietly slink back home, where her sister would be crying. Other sisters might be angry, but Natsumi was a genuinely gentle soul who would apologise tearfully for whatever she had done wrong, and promise never to do it again, and just generally have such an iron grip on the moral high ground that she could start charging taxes there.

So, she wandered, as aimless as a cloud, until she arrived where everybody who wears slippers and pyjamas outside must one day come to rest: the convenience store.

There were people – naive, romantic people – who believed that convenience stores were the one place in the modern world where you wouldn’t be judged, no matter what (or how little) you happened to be wearing and no matter what time you rolled in at. They were comforted by the knowledge that the staff could not care less about them, as a result of being constantly exposed to the weird and unfortunately dressed at all times.

These people had fundamentally misunderstood the nature of apathy. A judgement was something that happened all by itself, without effort. It wasn’t that the staff didn’t care enough to judge you. They just didn’t care enough to _remember_ you. Your face was one among hundreds that they would talk to, smile at, and take money from; whatever judgement they had made would last until you walked out of the door, at which point they would cheerfully forget about you, so as to go on with their lives. Unless, of course, you gave them a reason not to.

Mei, having vanquished several customer service assistants in her tireless quest for journalistic fidelity and tasty after-school snacks, knew the score. She treated the staff with a healthy dose of fear and respect; as an information broker, she was more aware than most about the perils of upsetting somebody who had seen your face, your ID, and the kind of garbage you filled your basket with on a regular basis. She therefore scuttled behind the shelves at the back and occupied herself with staring wistfully at things that had too many chemicals in them to be anything short of a war crime.

There, she waited. What for, she didn’t know. Divine intervention, perhaps, or for a pair of penguin allies to sneak into the store carrying some real clothes, or at least some shoes. That wasn’t too much to expect, was it? A pair of shoes? They could carry one shoe each, to spare their little backs. If they really felt like putting the effort in, they could carry a pair each. Then she’d have _four_ shoes and a pair of slippers – one piece of footwear for every limb, and a spare pair to use as throwing weapons in the event of a random encounter.

Then she saw _it_.

She had actually seen it several times. Made a point of looking at it wistfully every time she came into the store, in fact. It was a glorious, decadent, white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake, and she had wanted it for weeks. Whether Mei had a maiden’s innocent heart was a matter of debate, but she definitely had a maiden’s endless stomach for delicious dessert items. She also had a maiden’s small and limited allowance, which rendered the cheesecake outside of her usual buying power.

But what, she wondered, if the cheesecake was not just a cheesecake? Using social alchemy, she could transform the cheesecake into something much more valuable: an apology. Natsumi used cake to settle interpersonal disputes all the time, so it only made sense to do the same thing to her. It was now a diplomatic solution that would run in the family – a tale of two sisters.

Her purse was in her coat pocket, and she thoughtfully inspected the contents. The cake would rob her of all her allowance. But, she thought with the canny expression of a nascent business owner, she’d told Yuki that she got “twenty-five a day, plus expenses.” Cheesecake, she had decided, was an expense. She could say it was for a bribe. Bribes were a very private investigator thing to do.

It was decided. With trembling hands, she seized the cheesecake, which may well have been her destiny, and set off to the counter. She smiled guilelessly as she paid, and walked away with a skip in her step.

The cashier noticed, and remembered her. But only briefly.

* * *

Halfway home, with a cake in her hand and a declaration of contrition drafted in her head, Mei stopped sharply when she heard the sound of a garbage can toppling over.

On any other night, she would have put it down to a raccoon, or a fox, or just plain trash goblins. She was a firm believer in trash goblins, although she’d never seen one. It wasn’t that surprising, though; everybody knew that goblins were masters of the ninja arts, and trash goblins were the stealthiest of the bunch.

But then she heard shouting. And in Ebimanyou Town, saying you’d heard shouting was tantamount to saying you’d heard QP.

Her head said that she should just ignore it and move on with her life. She was carrying a precious and delicate cake, and furthermore she had no particular intention of letting QP know that she wore jammies with cute pictures of animals on them.

But her gut told her that she was a journalist, and you didn’t become a journalist by _not_ being nosy when the opportunity presented itself. Yuki’s twelve cents – most of the coins, upon further inspection, had been of foreign denomination – meant nothing to her, but she refused to compromise her god-given right to rubberneck. With justice on her side and without an ounce of fear in her heart, Mei darted around the corner towards the source of the fracas.

The ounce of fear Mei had misplaced was quickly returned to her when a glowing bullet of light soared past her nose and very nearly singed off her eyebrows. She needed her eyebrows. They were a very important part of her facial architecture, and like all historic architecture, needed to be protected.

In the alleyway, silhouetted by the dancing light show she was currently producing, was a dog. A crimson scarf – sadly not affixed by hair spray – billowed behind her. At some point, she had supplemented her costume with a dark spandex bodysuit, although she had failed the most important superhero commandment by not wearing her underwear on the outside. She had somehow sourced a bright yellow utility belt with a pudding-shaped buckle, against all laws of fashion; what tools it contained were a mystery, to be revealed when narratively convenient.

“This has gone too far!” she howled. “I can’t let you use those crazy devices any more!”

“Oh boy...” came the cool reply. “I’m only using them because you force me to.”

Mei blinked, a dangerous thing to do when observing a pitched firefight. She couldn’t help it. The voice had taken her completely by surprise.

Mainly because it was _male_.

She’d been convinced that QP’s new nemesis was, well, Syura. Who else would it be? Nobody else was stupid or obsessed enough to mess with her. But last she checked, Syura was _definitely_ of the female persuasion, and certainly didn’t have the kind of vocal chords she’d need for a voice like that.

Not to mention that, well, now that she looked at it, the so-called ‘pitched battle’ really kind of… _wasn’t_. At the very least, it wasn’t up to Syura’s standards. The aspiring game dev couldn’t hope to match QP’s prodigious bullet output, but she lived and breathed bullet hell; few people in Ebimanyou Town could dodge and weave like Syura could, learning patterns and seizing opportunities. Whoever QP was fighting kept getting hit, muscling through it all with sheer durability.

“Give it up! I don’t know who you are, but there’s no way you can beat me!” QP yelled.

There was a momentary break in the deluge, and for a split second Mei saw QP’s opponent: clad in metal shin pads and a face-concealing helmet, they only stood a little taller than QP herself. Around their shoulders was a cape with more than a few scorched bullet holes, and they were breathing heavily.

“Hah… Seems it’s time for a distraction,” he muttered, and opened his palm to reveal what looked like a roll of quarters with a button on top, which he pressed with his thumb.

With lightning reactions, QP dove clear from the garbage can that had been knocked over earlier. Apparently, this hurt the feelings of the trash goblins within, because it exploded violently. The boom rattled Mei’s teeth and shook the ground beneath her, and a cloud of smoke billowed out from the blast. In the split second before it overtook her, she saw QP get nailed in the face by a flying banana peel.

The scent of smouldering trash hit her like a physical force. Then something _actually_ hit her like a physical force as QP’s nemesis seized the opportunity created by the chaos and barrelled through the smoke cloud, barging her straight off her feet as they escaped.

She spiralled, in a glorious slow-motion shot, through the air, her hat tumbling off as she fell. Her face met the gutter with a crunch. Her cheesecake – the precious cheesecake, her apology to her beloved sister – soared through the air in a beautiful arc, until it landed with a splat on the back of her head.

For almost thirty seconds, Mei was motionless: face down, rump up, showing off her animal print jammies to the whole world. She felt almost at peace with the world; it had been very scenic, she thought. In the film of her life, it would be a great shot.

When the shock wore off, it was replaced with a dull-thudding pain – and then with a very quickly rising anger. The cheesecake was delicious but it was destroyed, and with it, her plan at reconciliation with her sister. This was no longer about twenty-five a day plus expenses. This was about _family_.

And someone, somewhere, was going to pay.


	2. Chapter 2

QP was a girl who had gotten used to seeing unusual things.

In fact, almost everybody in her home town had gotten used to seeing unusual things, mostly because of her own shenanigans. But they never considered that, as the epicentre of the whirling weirdness vortex that was her social circle, she had reached a point of zen acceptance. She knew how it all worked. The world was full of mysteries, and would be full of mysteries for the foreseeable future, unless a particularly enterprising dog decided to resolve said mysteries with heavy ordnance. That was the thing about overwhelming firepower. If you applied enough of it, little concepts like ‘how’ and ‘why’ became pretty irrelevant.

Still, as she looked down into the gutter at Mei, who was alternating between bawling her eyes out and hurling the kinds of invectives that QP liked to pretend she didn’t know about, she experienced emotions that she hadn’t experienced in some time, like pity, and anger, and a vague sense of hunger. (‘Some time’ was, in fact, measurable in hours, specifically three of them, which had elapsed since she had watched Syura trying to eat cup noodles with a spoon because her dishwasher was on the fritz.)

When she was done experiencing emotions, she took a scoop of icing with one finger and experienced cake, which was by and large a more pleasant thing to experience. The cake itself was particularly pleasant, in fact, and not even the sight of Mei’s animal print pyjamas could take away from the delicious taste of white chocolate and raspberries that floated through QP’s mouth. It was so tasty that she only vaguely remembered the whole thing about dogs and chocolate being a generally poor combination, but since she was only _part_ dog and white chocolate was the least chocolate chocolate, she could probably get away with it.

She actually ate things that the average canine would be well-advised to avoid on a pretty regular basis, without ever even realising it and with little-to-no side effects. What granted this mysterious protection was a question for the ages. Perhaps her status as a deity of sweets immunised her from death via food, as befitted a member of the culinary pantheon. Perhaps her human legs and human arms and mostly human brain also came with a human liver and kidneys as part of a promotional stunt, and lesser dogs – ones who had not opted for the sports-model chassis at the corporeal form dealership – had not received this windfall. Perhaps inside of QP, there were infinite smaller, cellular QPs, who unleashed infinite smaller deluges of bullets on anything that even vaguely looked like it might impact her health, vaporising such offenders on impact. Nobody could say.

Eventually Mei stopped crying, although she never actually stopped cursing. Having already given up on catching the nefarious ne’er-do-well she’d been fighting, QP waited patiently for it to run its course. Sometimes you just needed to cuss out the world in general. Life was like that.

Eventually, when Mei was finished letting the world know _exactly_ what she thought of it (and of its extended family, many of whom she claimed to have had intimate relationships with), she raised her head and said, in a low, level voice: “QP, you have to help me.”

“I’m not QP,” she said.

Mei’s slipper appeared in her hand, and she began to brandish it with self-righteous fury. “This is _not_ the time, QP. I swear to the twelve gods of journalism that if you don’t help me out, I. Will. Smite. You.”

She waggled the slipper at every word. Some ancient dog part of QP’s brain cringed as she did. The slipper held a special place in the dog-human relationship. It was symbolic: dogs brought slippers to their masters each morning. To do so was a recognition of their master’s authority. If their master turned that slipper against them, they could do nothing but submit to the weapon that they themselves had delivered. She didn’t consider Mei her master, but the implication remained.

Still, for all her inclinations towards extreme violence, she was a good girl and heart, and chose to believe Mei didn’t know she was committing a war crime. “I’ll help you, but I’m not QP. I’m Danger Dog, your friendly neighbourhood hound who chases crime!”

“Listen, I don’t have time to argue. I don’t know what you were doing with that weird tin can man, but that cake you just tasted was meant to be an apology for my sister. I can’t give it to her like this, and I can’t show my face at home until I’ve got something to replace it,” Mei snapped.

“You and Nacchan were fighting? That’s rare. What was it about?”

“Nothing,” Mei said quickly. She might be tired, unfashionable and covered with cake, but there was no way she was letting QP know they’d been fighting over – no, no, _about_ – her. It would bloat her ego so much that her head would blow up like a hot air balloon and she’d float into the sun, which as a situation had its attractiveness but would have repercussions down the line. “I just… I just need some help.”

She liked the voice quaver she managed to put into that. Damn fine work, if she said so herself.

“It’s… it’s been a rough day, and I’m covered in cake, and…”

Oh, wait. Was that a real voice quaver? An honest-to-god, born in the wild voice quaver?

“...and I’m in my jammies, and I have to shower _again_ even though I already _did_ because the sprinklers went off in class…”

She could feel fat, wet tears starting to flow down her cheeks. Was that part of the plan? It must have been part of the plan.

“...and that weird cat threatened me and she didn’t even _pay_ properly, and I fought with Nacchan and that’s the worst part, and the cake is ruined so I can’t apologise and I didn’t even say hi to the penguins and… _what am I gonna do_?”

Finally, as if it had been waiting inside her for the last twelve or so hours, a wail escaped from her lips and she dissolved into tears – the incoherent, breathless kind of crying that stops you from talking properly, but demands that you _try_ , because you have to make sense of it, because you have to give an account of how you got into this state.

QP listened patiently. She even reached out with one hand and tentatively stroked Mei’s forehead as she sobbed. When the first heavy wave of tears had receded (although, like all tides, it would return shortly), she spoke.

“Let’s go get waffles,” she said.

Mei didn’t know how waffles would solve all the problems she’d found herself with. But a world with waffles in it was better than a world without, so she nodded, and put her slipper back on her foot where it belonged.

* * *

It was, perhaps, the best waffle she’d ever tasted.

Mei didn’t cry that often. She was in touch with her emotions, but some emotions were close enough that she could borrow a cup of sugar from them and others were distant relatives that you only wrote to when somebody in the family died. Crying was somewhere in between, and usually dropped by unannounced before she’d had time to clean the emotional guest room.

So she forgot just how _tiring_ it was, what with all the production of the tears and the moving of the chest and the making of noises she would forever deny that she’d made. It really took it out of you. She felt like she’d done a full-body workout, and she needed some glucose before her brain rolled down the blinds and turned off the lights for the day.

Sugar had been provided, in the form of soft, fluffy batter, straight off the iron and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and lashings of syrup. It was heaven, and put things into some kind of perspective for her. Things could have been worse. She’d been pretty close to a live explosive, after all.

QP had explained the situation to the staff. Then she had explained it again, louder, and finally she made the kind of noise usually associated with a thermonuclear weapon taking a quick trip across the border to see the local landmarks. As a result, they were now allowed to use the employee bathroom to towel off Mei’s hair, provided they had their own towel. They didn’t, but reinforcements were coming.

“Thanks, QP. For this,” she said, and gestured to her plate. “It… really helped.”

“No problem,” the masked mutt replied, puffing out a chest that seemed to barely exist.

“It’s all part of the service.”

“The, uh… superhero service?”

“No, the _dog_ service,” QP said patiently. “Don’t you know what ‘dog’ stands for?”

“It… it’s a word, QP. It’s not an acronym. It doesn’t _stand_ for anything.”

“Nope! It stands for ‘doer of good’, just like ‘god’ stands for ‘guardian of desserts’. Geez, what are they teaching youngsters nowadays?”

“I… I go to your school. I’m in your class!”

“Oh, right. Did we have math homework? I kinda slept through the last bit of that class. Heroing really tires you out.”

Mei found herself nonplussed, which she suspected was the intent. It was harder to burst into tears when your brain was wrapping itself around the sheer Gordian knot that was QP’s logic.

She’d gotten no closer to understanding the profundity of QP’s brain when Syura announced her arrival. She did this by throwing a balled-up towel at QP’s face, declaring that it was her Jecht Shot Mark IV and that swimming behind the goal was the mark of a coward. She had the glazed look of somebody who was still thinking in terms of damage formulas and character builds, and it would take her a good fifteen minutes more to return to the world of normal humans.

Thankfully, she had at least brought some of her spare uniform, which was as close to Mei’s size as made no difference, and with it, she was one step close to an existence marked by dignity, professionalism, and a lack of cake in her hair. She scurried off to the bathroom, leaving QP and Syura to their own devices.

When she got back, there was another waffle waiting for her. She felt like she might burst into tears again. To the outside world, she, QP and Syura were just three weirdos in a waffle house. But in their hearts, they had forged a true and enduring bond of camaraderie. They solidified it by, wordlessly, agreeing to conform to the stereotype about what teenage girls did in waffle houses: discuss guys. Specifically, the guy with the bucket on his head that had planted C4 in Mei’s cake.

(His offences, as was tradition, got larger every time Mei had to tell the story. By the time she’d told it ten times, he would have planted a nuclear device in her back garden and force-fed her penguins mud on live television.)

“What do we know about this guy?” she asked.

“Not a lot,” QP replied, her ears drooping. “He probably had a motive, but I kinda zoned out in his introductory speech so we could get to the bit where I won.”

Syura nodded her agreement. “Oh! I totally getcha there. I do that all the time in visual novels – just hold down control until I get to the action scenes.”

“Don’t you usually play like… yuri romance novels? Do they have a lot of action scenes?”

From what Mei understood, it was usually a very _specific_ kind of action, but she was keen to move the conversation along from what she might or might not know about virtual erotica. “So you don’t know what he actually wants?”

“He wants to get his head examined,” was the growled response. “Who just runs around with explosives? I mean, who _does_ that?”

Syura and Mei looked at each other, aware that QP had – in her own adorable way – blundered upon the world’s most important question. Who, in fact, _did_ run around with explosives?

Mei, who couldn’t always remember if her job was being an information broker, a private detective or a high-flying, hell-in-a-cell professional wrestler, decided to apply strands of all three professions to her thinking. There weren’t many places you could get explosives in a small town like theirs. You needed to go through certain… _paralegal_ channels. If you found those channels, you’d find his supplier, who was bound to have some information. At the very least, you could dispose of them, and thus his supply of things that went ‘boom’ in the night.

Syura, on the other hand, applied videogame logic, wherein the police were not present, ammunition was plentiful, and you could find both live grenades and healing potions bristling from the shelves of the local 7-11 in quantities only limited by the amount of money in your wallet. Predictably, her line of enquiries ended somewhat earlier than Mei’s.

“Come to think of it,” Mei muttered, “Yuki did say–”

At the mention of Yuki’s name, QP’s open, amiable face suddenly clouded over. Not, of course, in the way that a sunny afternoon clouds over as a hint that you should rethink your ambitions of a picnic, but rather in the way that a wide swathe of the ocean clouds over as a hint that you should rethink your current life expectancy.

“You’ve been talking to her? She’s bad news. She’s a _bad cat,”_ QP said darkly, as though it was the sharpest expletive in her vocabulary. Perhaps it was. “I wouldn’t trust anything she says.”

“...that her goons had gotten caught up with that weird bucket head guy,” Mei finished.

“Oh, that’s true,” the dog confirmed immediately. “Well, kinda. I didn’t really have any leads on the guy, so I just sorta went around and–”

“–did what a QP does,” Syura said diplomatically. “You know. Throws stuff at the wall to see what sticks, tries novel solutions, lets loose the dogs of war. That kind of thing.”

Mei was familiar with the process, having experienced it herself several times. The logic seemed to be that if she beat up everybody in town, _one_ of them was bound to have done it. But, she supposed, it had been a blessing in this case. If she hadn’t randomly been fighting people, Yuki never would have come calling for information, and they’d never have known the goons and QP’s new ‘nemesis’ were connected.

“I think,” she said delicately, “we should talk to Tomato and Mimyuu.”

“Is that, uh, the diplomatic kind of talking?” Syura asked. “Or is it the, uh, more direct kind?”

Mei scowled. “Let’s just say we probably won’t need words. We’ll have other ways to communicate.”

The plan seemed acceptable to all three of them. For QP, it was nothing out of the ordinary. For Syura, words like ‘it’s dangerous to go alone!’ and ‘ _X_ has joined your party!’ had made her grateful to include Mei in her backup, or rather, meat-shields. And for Mei… well, she owed QP for two whole waffles, and she had sworn revenge for her wasted cake. She didn’t swear revenge lightly, although she did do it slightly more often than the average bear.

“Oh, but let’s do that tomorrow,” QP interjected. “First, we gotta help you make up with Natsumi. I’ve got the perfect plan, so hear me out.”

Mei raised an eyebrow as QP puffed out her chest, and assumed the smug aura of a dog with absolute confidence in herself.

“Pudding,” she declared.

The other eyebrow joined its compatriot. Eyebrows, like rabbits, got lonesome easily, and always sought the company of their peers before long.

“That’s a great plan. You were gonna bribe her with a dessert anyway, so we’ll get the world’s foremost expert on pudding to whip up something special,” Syura opined.

“It wasn’t a _bribe_. It was just… you know. A gift, to say sorry.”

“Right. You were just trading food for forgiveness, and earlier you traded money for the food, so it’s not like you’re buying forgiveness with money.”

Mei got the distinct feeling she was being made fun of, but also felt like her day had been bad enough without punching somebody in a waffle house. She counted to ten in her head, breathed deeply, and imagined her sister smiling.

“Let’s do it,” she said, and she was so relieved that she forgot to ask QP why she was wearing that stupid superhero costume.

* * *

The thing about Yuki was that she knew how to put people between a rock and a hard place, and how to make herself function as both at the same time.

A classic example was the basic act of speaking to her. Whenever she spoke, it was smug. Mocking. She taunted. She talked down. She _dared_ you to do something about it, to do something about _her_ , and only smirked wider when you didn’t. She wanted to make you feel like you were weak and impotent, and often, she succeeded.

But the alternative to Yuki talking was Yuki being quiet, which was an entirely different experience. She understood that when your mouth fell silent, your actions shouted – and she knew just how to lash her tail, to flatten her ears, to put her hand just in the right position to make it look like she might pull her gun at any time. She only went quiet when she was furious – and when she was furious, she had a regrettable tendency to do something about it.

She hadn’t spoken for almost forty-five seconds.

Tomato and Minyuu, who were also silent but for entirely different reasons, looked at each other and engaged the kind of telepathy that only very close siblings could ever muster. Mostly, they were discussing who got whose stuff in the event that one of them died in the next ten minutes.

“So,” Yuki said at last, putting her hands on the desk. “I just got a call from one of my contacts in the police department.”

This was not a good start. It was a very very not good start. Teachers, in the sisters’ opinion, were bad enough. The police were like teachers on steroids, and they were allowed to hit you back if you got lairy with them.

“They say there’s been a series of explosions in the town. One a couple days ago. Another one tonight. Why,” Yuki asked, “do you think they would tell _me_ about that?”

Rhetorical questions were also of the cat’s favourite tactics when it came to dressing down her underlings. If they didn’t reply, she got angry. If they _did_ reply, she got even angrier. It was foolproof, and her goons were nothing if not fools.

“Okay. Let’s ask another question. How many fireworks factories are in this town?”

The sisters looked at each other again. They weren’t expecting a quiz. The Waruda made their base in an abandoned cram school, and Yuki _had_ taken them to the principal’s office (in which she had installed a darts board and a cabinet full of expensive whisky), but nobody had said there would be learning. It was a breach of contract.

“The answer,” the cat continued, “is none. There are also no chemical plants in town, or chemical research labs. Nowhere makes ammunition near here. No mining operations. What do you think that means?”

Wisely, the sisters remained silent, and waited for the hammer to fall of its own accord.

“Let me let you in on something about the police. When things start going ‘boom’, it makes them upset. Usually, it’s a freak one-off. But when it happens twice in one week, they start asking questions. One of those questions is, ‘who, in this area, has the necessary skills to make explosive devices’?” She folded her arms. The tail lashed. “It’s not a long list. It’s not a list at all, because there’s only one damn name on it.”

“Oh,” Tomato murmured as the dots connected. “Oh,” Mimyuu echoed.

“Lucky for you, I have an arrangement with the cops. I come down on anybody causing too much trouble on my turf, and they get to stay fat and lazy until the day I come for them, too. But that means I gotta deal with this internally.”

“Uh, boss… That doesn’t sound lucky for us. It sounds worse.”

“I’m glad we understand each other.” She stalked out from behind the desk. She was getting into the swing of things, now. “So. Why don’t you tell me who you’ve been selling explosives to, Mimyuu?”

The junior Waruda looked at her sister, then at the ground, and at last, longingly, at the window. She could probably survive a two-storey fall. She was a kid, and kids bounced.

“Some guy with a bucket on his head,” she muttered miserably.

“I see. And one day after you sold him the explosives, QP came looking for him, didn’t she? And she beat you up, because that’s the way she operates – she just fights a string of people and then the problem resolves itself. One person just naturally leads to the next.” The cat began to pace, her arms folded. She was, at this point in her life, something of a QP expert. She found the dog annoying, but if there was one thing she respected in life, it was strength – and QP had that in spades. “She’s right, too. You’re part of the chain. She just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Uh… boss. Why is this important?”

“It’s _important_ ,” Yuki hissed, “because you didn’t _tell me_ you were involved. You told me she just did it randomly. I’ve hired somebody to look into it, out of my own pocket – and she’ll probably figure out what you two idiots were up to right away, and tell that stupid dog about it. What do you think that mutt will do?”

Tomato gulped. “Uh… Round 2?”

“Round 2,” Yuki nodded grimly. “She’ll come back for you idiots, and then probably go straight to fighting me. Because I’m one step up the chain, right? So. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna head her off at the pass.”

“You mean we’re gonna ambush her?” Tomato asked dubiously. She was, naturally, all for the idea of an ambush – but against QP? Even with the element of surprise, it was a hard sell.

“No. We’re going to catch up to this bucket head guy and we’re going to teach him what happens to troublemakers in our town. We take his bombs away, turn him over to that dog, and we get credit for helping subdue a dangerous terrorist.” She cracked her knuckles. “Mimyuu? Start checking on the spy network. Tomato, hit the street. If we can get him quickly enough, Waruda will come out of this smelling like a rose.”

And you two, the unspoken addendum went, will come out of this alive.

* * *

Night had begun to fall by the time Mei waved goodbye to Syura and QP.

It was a very careful kind of wave, because her other hand was occupied by one of the largest preparations of pudding she had seen. It was, of course, top quality. One spoonful, QP swore, would make any pure hearted maiden weak at the knees, and there was definitely more than that in the container. Mei must have been purer of heart than she thought, because her legs felt like jelly when she looked at the peerless pudding she had been bestowed. When you looked into the wibbly-wobbly abyss, so too did it look back unto you.

She’d had no hand in actually producing the pudding. QP had been very emphatic that neither she, nor Syura, were allowed in her kitchen. Perhaps this was wise. Syura seemed to consider concepts like nutrition and food preparation as dishonourable for a hardcore gamer like herself, and Mei cooked about as much as you would expect for a girl with her sister’s infinite cooking prowess to rely on, i.e. not at all.

But carrying the pudding was, by itself, a sombre and noble duty. It was like being the one who carried the crown at a monarch’s coronation, except most monarchs did not then dig into their fancy regalia with a spoon. It _had_ happened – royalty was a very strange and powerful drug – but not very often.

It was, she had to admit, tempting to take just a tiny taste. It was a premium pudding, after all. The best of the best. Did the footman that bore the crown never once dream of wearing it for themselves, just to see how heavy it was on the brow?

But, with a will folded tempered like the finest samurai swords that Krila was always ranting about, she resisted the temptation. Pudding was a powerful force, but it was momentary. Her sister’s forgiveness would taste far sweeter, and wouldn’t go to her hips.

A small, traitorous part of her – the part that calculated the fees for her agency and carefully gauged how much interest any event would have in the gossip column – whispered that she would probably get a taste of the pudding anyway. Natsumi had some very chef-y habits, one of which was eating just a little of something and then thinking about the flavour profile. She loved to watch other people eat delicious things. It was such a basic, vital kind of happiness, and she wanted everybody to be able to experience it.

That was the thing Mei loved most about her sister. There was no greed in Natsumi. No gluttony. They just weren’t a part of her makeup. She went out of her way to give people things, to make them happy. If she had nothing to give, she _made_ something. It was one thing to share what you had, and quite another to make something with the intent of giving it away.

It was rare, and it was precious. Mei wanted to protect it – that way of thinking. That way of being. She’d fight tooth and nail if she had to, and she’d fight _anybody_. It didn’t matter who. She’d even fight herself.

So although Natsumi would offer her some of the reconciliatory pudding, she wouldn’t take it. Or if she did take it, she’d only take a little bit. She would wrestle down that selfishness, take it out into the alley and introduce its metaphorical kneecaps to the equally metaphorical baseball bat of discipline. Natsumi gave so much. It was time she got something for herself.

As she thought about this, something felt wrong.

The town that never slept, except when it did, was putting on its nightcap and brushing its teeth before bed. Children were being tucked in, scandalous television series were creeping onto the air, and hundreds of microwave turntables were rotating as hard-working people prepared ready meals before or after work. The streets were almost empty.

But not quite.

There was a saying that pets took after their owners, or that owners took after their pets. Mei was the proud owner of a pair of very paranoid penguins, and while she didn’t have their immediate urge to cringe away in a flurry of feathers, she was alert enough to know when she was being followed.

She didn’t turn around. In a town with as many nooks, crannies, and conveniently placed boxes as Ebimanyou Town, she wouldn’t see anybody. Instead, she listened, with ears honed by rumour and gossip.

Somebody was timing their footsteps to match hers. But they were a little louder than hers would have been. A little heavier. They were probably bigger than her, then, although not by much.

She stopped for a moment, pretending to be absorbed in the state of her shoelaces, which did not exist because she was wearing slippers. The footsteps behind her also stopped. Not just a tail then, or at least not a competent one. A good tail would have kept on walking to deflect suspicion, circled around and started following again at the closest opportunity.

It was at about this point that Mei began to ask herself some very important questions, like how loud she could scream, and how fast she could run.

She didn’t quite know the answer to the first question, but the answer to the second was ‘not fast enough’. Syura’s spare clothes had not included a pair of shoes, and her slippers weren’t exactly the sportiest of footwear. They’d fall off near instantly if she broke into a sprint, and between a person in proper shoes and someone running barefoot, she’d wager on the one in shoes ten times out of ten.

Flying wasn’t on the cards, either. All the arguing, crying, and consuming of waffles that she’d done had burned through her energy, and flying took a lot out of her at the best of times. Taking flight on an empty tank was a good way to end up with a broken arm or leg.

Fighting… was not a great option. Without a pair of penguins to throw at her opponents, she’d be reduced to throwing hands, one of which was currently occupied with a very precious pudding. Logically, she could put it down. Logically, it didn’t matter if it was damaged. But at this point, that pudding was a symbol of all sorts of things, and she couldn’t bear to let go of it.

She was quickly narrowing down her options to nothing, and the footsteps had begun to feel like they were drawing closer.

There was _one_ option that seemed like it might work. She didn’t want to get in an all-out brawl, but she could turn around, get in a quick sucker-punch and then use the opportunity to flee. She knew the area well enough, and she could probably either find a shop that was still open, make it back home, or just lose the trail before they recovered – especially if she flew for just a little bit, just enough to take her over a wall or something…

Behind her, a foot crunched in the gravel – far nearer than she’d thought, and too close for comfort. Her time had run out. Her hackles rose. She breathed deep, turned like the crack of a whip, and swung.

There were three iron laws when it came to street fighting, and Mei knew them all. One: she who strikes first, succeeds. Two: if your back hits the ground, you’re as good as done.

The third, and perhaps most important rule, was that you either went for the eyes, or for the groin. As Mei’s knuckles bounced uselessly off a familiar metal helmet, she really wished she’d gone for option B on that one.

Her back hit the floor ten seconds later.


	3. Chapter 3

For QP, there were very few things in life more satisfying than a job well done, and one of them was being smug about it afterwards. Not _too_ smug, of course, because even she was not immune to the great swinging hammer of karma, but just enough to add a little spice to the sweet taste of victory.

So when she got to school that morning, her first order of business was to track down Natsumi. Either of the sisters would do, really, but Mei might object to having her face rubbed in QP’s diplomatic triumph.

With the fine-tuned nose of a pedigree hound, QP found her target meandering around the schoolyard, and approached with a wagging tail. Her heart was already pounding in anticipation of seeing the results of her hard work. Maybe there would even be _praise_. Praise to QP was like the sun to a sunflower, which made the ever-supportive Natsumi very popular in her books.

“Good morning!” she said. The ‘good morning’ was very important. Natsumi was a polite girl, and she liked it when other people were polite back. “Did you and Mei make up okay last night?”

Natsumi blinked. It was at this point that QP realised that her eyes were uncharacteristically bloodshot. The lids were puffy, too. It was like she hadn’t slept at all. This was disconcerting, since she had achieved a mastery of hot chocolate and therefore absolute power over the realm of dreams.

“Q-chan… Oh, Q-chan! You’ve seen my sister?” Natsumi asked. Her voice was… well, it was still softer and calmer than most people’s, but for her it was the height of panic.

“Thank goodness… Did she stay at your house last night?”

QP’s tail ceased to wag. “Uh… no? I saw her, but she was on her way back.” _With a pudding guaranteed to knock your socks off_ , she added mentally.

Natsumi’s brow furrowed. “She never came home last night. I’ve been worried sick. Red and Blue can’t settle down, either… I thought maybe she’d end up with you, so I rang, but you didn’t pick up…”

“I left my phone in my… my other set of pants,” QP said woodenly. There hadn’t been pockets on her superhero leotard.

With the finely honed mind of a dog with a knack for finding, creating, and subsequently annihilating trouble, she considered the situation. Her first thought, of course, was the pudding, because pudding would always hold the top spot in her personal cosmology. Could Mei have simply absconded with the reconciliatory pudding? Had she just been faking crying for sympathy, to get said pudding?

It took her only a second to discard the theory. Mei valued her relationship with Natsumi too highly. Maybe a little too highly in general, but definitely too highly to invoke her sister’s name in the pursuit of gluttony and keep the proceeds for herself.

Could somebody have stolen the pudding from her on the walk back? It _was_ , after all, a very desirable dessert. An exemplar of the species, maybe even a paragon. There were people who’d do _anything_ for a pudding like that, and QP would know. She was one of them.

But again, that line of enquiry went nowhere. She felt in her bones that the pudding was, as of yet, uneaten. It had probably been out of the fridge too long as well. Somewhere in the city, it was crying out to be saved. On a cosmic level, QP heard it. She felt its pain.

Somewhere out there, there was a pudding in danger. And if the pudding was in danger, so was Mei. She had to do something about it.

“Don’t worry, Natsumi. We’re going to find her,” QP said at last. “Syura?”

The school’s resident gamer girl, who could usually be found floating vaguely in QP’s vicinity, perked up her ears.

“Mei’s missing. Tell the teacher me and Natsumi are skipping school to look for her.”

Syura shook her head violently, turning her lobster braid into an impromptu morning star that whirled around her shoulders. “No can do. Mei’s my number one reliable source for real life tips and tricks! I’m not sitting this one out. I’m a required party member for this mission!”

Instead, she darted away to Krila, who was pontificating loudly about her dark eye to basically anybody who failed to run away fast enough. Luckily, such velocity was easy for most students to achieve, for Krila had a top speed of ponderous and negligible acceleration. In a world of go-karts and electric bicycles, she was a rowing boat.

“Krila, can you tell the teacher that me, QP and Natsumi are skipping school for an S rank hunting mission? I’ll give you my lunch tomorrow if you do.”

“Oho! So, you have come to bargain with dark forces. I warn thee, your meagre excuse for a lunch will never sate the appetite of the dark god dwelling inside me,” the beastmaster cackled theatrically, before saying in a more quiet and reproachful voice: “You always just bring a bag of chips and an energy drink. I’m not even _allowed_ to have energy drinks.”

“Alright, fine! I’ll give you _QP’s_ lunch tomorrow if you do it,” Syura replied. She was always eager to solve a problem today by creating a different problem in the future, on the basis that time heals all wounds and she might have gotten a level up in the interim.

“Ooh. The beast god’s lunchbox is a forbidden trove of delight… very well. I, Krilalaris, who watches over the abyss of the schoolyard, shall discharge this duty. Engrave this promise upon your soul!”

Syura smiled her cat’s smile, and returned to her comrades safe in the knowledge that, even if Krila wouldn’t approach the teachers with diplomacy, she would at least confuse them enough that they’d listen to an explanation later. She returned to her comrades with her head held high.

“Thank you both…” Natsumi said, bowing her head. “Let’s go and find my sister.”

QP nodded grimly. “Sure. But I want to stop by the R-bit Room first. I have a feeling I’m going to need some firepower for this one.”

As the trio casually floated up and over the gate, Krila watched them go. When she was sure they were out of earshot, she reached into her puffy and voluminous skirt and extracted a mobile phone, which she had decorated with various magical arcane stickers. With trembling fingers, she dialled the number of the most dangerous cat in town.

“Hello? Yes, it is I, Krilalaris. I have news of the Beast God’s movements. She and two of her underlings have skipped school to roam in the unbounded wilderness.”

There was a long silence on the other side of the phone, and then a short, sharp question.

“Yes, it seems to be a matter of great import. Perhaps an omen. The Beast God looked quite incensed. It seems that a friend of hers has gone missing, and she intends to extract a great vengeance – hello?”

The phone line had gone dead. But before it did, there had been a sound that Krila had never heard before, and which she sincerely prayed she never heard again: the sound of a cat going nuclear.

She didn’t know what was going on. But she was pretty sure that _somebody_ in the city, at that moment, should take some time to truly appreciate their kneecaps. They wouldn’t have that opportunity for very much longer.

* * *

Mei woke up in the middle of the town’s solitary abandoned warehouse, tied to a chair.

Ebimanyou Town was quite proud of its abandoned warehouse. It had been constructed at the mayor’s behest, for the specific purpose of not being occupied. It was a statement piece. It said: here in Ebimanyou Town, we have such industry – such riches – that we can simply afford to let a good piece of land sit. We have filled it with shipping containers, which contain the air they were shipped with and nothing else, and a few of our copious supplies of boxes, and we have left it there, as a reminder of the vast economic potential that you, too, could enjoy if you lived here.

It also functioned as a meeting place for the town’s collection of gangsters and ne’er do wells, which suited everybody just fine. It was cultural, the mayor rumbled, and implied their town was big enough to be of interest to gangsters. The police chief was also a fan, reasoning that if all the criminals did business in the same abandoned warehouse, at least he knew where they were. Besides, they occasionally left kickbacks for the use of the facility. It was a bit like they were paying rent, he reasoned, and thus declared himself no more corrupt than any other landlord.

As a result, Mei’s first words were not ‘where am I?’, because she knew exactly where she was, and not ‘what happened?’, because she had a pretty good idea of that as well. Instead she cursed, loudly and fluently, until she’d run out of words that were suitably offensive. It took a while. As expected of a journalist, she had a rather extensive vocabulary, and she knew how to use it.

Her kidnapper, who was leaning against one of the communally provided boxes, sighed heavily.

“This is why I prefer male company,” he said, with a voice that was low and smooth. “Women are such boorish creatures.”

His mask was lying on the box next to him.

His features, without the faintly ridiculous helmet, were not unattractive. In fact, he had the kind of sloping, angular pretty-boy face that some women spent their lives searching for, and never found except on the covers of smutty doujinshi. Not, of course, that Mei had any interest in that kind of thing. It was just, well, as a literary creature, she had to examine them for elements she might want to adapt for her own work. The growing library of thin books she kept hidden in the garden shed was strictly for research purposes.

Most striking was his blue hair, and a pair of eyes that were just brimming with cold disdain. Not the kind of bad-boy disdain energy that inspired crushes and sold magazines, but the kind that was genuinely cutting and slightly worrying on someone who was not a war veteran.

Mei considered her situation. She was tied to a chair. Her condition, which was previously not good enough to allow flight, had not improved by being hit in the face and falling unconscious for an indeterminate period of time. She was a vulnerable teenage girl, completely helpless and in the power of a teenage boy. Diplomacy was called for.

“You dirty, cheating, sexist mother--” she began, and carried on with a stream of raw vitriol that would have shivered the cockles of an eighteenth century pirate captain.

When she had more or less tired herself out and had to catch her breath, her captor stood up. He walked over with a measured, deliberate pace. With what almost passed for tenderness, he brushed her bangs aside to examine the lump where he’d smashed her in the face. With equal tenderness, she tried her hardest to sink her teeth into his wrist.

“It won’t scar. You might not be a beauty, but at least you won’t get any more ugly,” he said consolingly. He had to hurriedly jerk his hand back to avoid the retaliatory bite. “You know… ‘QP’. I saw you together yesterday. Tell me about ‘her’.”

Her brow furrowed.

The air quotes around QP were strange, but acceptable. People sometimes didn’t believe that was her real name, because who the heck had a name like that?

But the air quotes around ‘her’ were weird with a capital woof. QP was definitely a girl. She had never claimed not to be a girl, and having endured a number of impromptu wrestling holds at the dog’s hands, Mei could confirm she was biologically a girl as well. A domino mask and a skintight leotard did nothing to disguise it.

“I’m not telling you a damn thing about my friend, you skeevy pervert,” she fired back, eyes flashing. “And don’t think you can intimidate me. I’ve covered wars, you know.”

“I’m sure.” His lips curled. “But you _will_ tell me what you know. I serve a force so powerful that not even the most boorish of maidens can resist it.”

Mei rolled her eyes, but had to make a legitimate effort to stop herself from smiling. Working as an information broker was _so_ much easier when you could get the people who wanted info to give you info by accident.

Ignoring her, the man stood up to his full height, posing like a magical girl about to enter her transformation sequence. For a brief, glimmering moment, a ray of sunlight infiltrated the warehouse through a skylight and illuminated him in dazzling clarity. All that was missing was a choir of cherubim to chant something in grammatically unsound Latin for the complete effect.

“True love,” he pronounced.

It was at that moment that Mei realised she was alone with a total freak.

“You’re in love with QP? Gross.” She narrowed her eyes as she spoke, to really put the venom over. “In fact, super gross. And you’re just kidnapping me to get date info for your crush? Turbo gross. You make me want to barf.”

“I’m not in love with that… _thug_ ,” he replied witheringly. “My heart is reserved for a gentler, nobler creature, who just so happens to look exactly like her.”

Mei dignified this with the response it deserved, which was none.

“The spitting image of her, actually. But he’s missing. I can’t find my dear, sweet Kyupita anywhere in this world… Our love has been crossed by the stars,” he sighed dramatically. “So I turned to his doppelgänger. She’s the only lead I have.”

“I don’t get,” Mei said patiently, “how this ties into the whole bomb-throwing maniac thing you had going on. Why’d you suddenly decide to become the man in the iron mask, huh?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “That dog and I have had… disagreements. Things were said. Places were touched. She tends to react aggressively. I can’t observe her properly while she’s trying to kill me.” A shadow fell over his face as he stared off into the distance, lost in memories that Mei hoped were very traumatic. “But then she started patrolling in costume, and I thought to play along. It allowed me a chance to view her… anonymously.”

“Until she found you and assumed you were a weirdo. Which you are.”

“At least I’m not tied to a chair.”

There was a tense moment as they stared each other down. True, she was tied to a chair. But she wouldn’t _always_ be tied to a chair. At some point in the indeterminate future, she would not be tied to the chair, and at that moment she was going to pick it up and hit him with it.

“So, final question. Why the heck did you kidnap me?”

“Because,” he said slowly, “You know QP. You can give me information.”

She took a deep breath. When she spoke, it came out as a hiss, much like the fuse of a piece of dynamite. “Yes, that’s true. I know a lot about QP. Do you know why? Because I’m _AN INFORMATION BROKER!”_ she roared. “ _I investigate people! I have an office! I hand out BUSINESS CARDS! YOU. COULD. HAVE. JUST. PAID. ME!”_

She shouted so loud that a box of hammers, startled, tried to escape from its perch and tumbled to the floor. Not many people have heard a box of hammers hit the floor, and even fewer have lived to tell the tale.

“Ah. I see,” he said stiffly, thoroughly wrong-footed. “I… don’t suppose that offer would still be open?”

“ _NO!_ You stalked me home, you hit me in the face, and you tied me to a chair! I’m not telling you ANYTHING about QP! But I’ll tell you one thing for free. I’ve got a sister, and she’s going to be looking for me. And as soon as she finds out what you’ve been up to, hoo boy, it’s gonna be a murder!”

“I very much doubt that,” he replied, although a little more uncertainly than he would have liked.

“You’ll know her when you see her. She’ll be the one carrying the huge knife.” _Not that she’d ever use it_ , Mei thought. But it was definitely there, at all times, and she had no greater desire in her life right now than to see the guy in front of her soil his trousers in pure fear.

It occurred to her that she had absolutely no doubt her sister would be coming. Nacchan could do it. Even if they’d had a fight, and even if she was usually as soft as butter, Natsumi would pull out all the stops to see that she was safe. That was what sisterly love was all about.

The thought of it sent a warm, fluffy feeling through her tired body. She felt almost comforted.

It was at about that point that the door exploded.

* * *

“Goodness… This is very exciting,” Natsumi murmured.

She had never had her own personal army before. Or her own personal zoo. She had somehow managed to find herself at the head of a mix between the two.

She was flanked by QP, Syura, and Aru, who already represented somewhat of a menagerie; behind them were a crack squad of Rbits, a motley assortment of chickens, Red and Blue, and a small detachment of ReBits, led by Aru’s close personal friend Rein.

(The ReBits almost didn’t come. They had a union, and union rules specified that they didn’t work outside of seasonal events. Rein had apparently convinced them that, between Natsumi and Aru, there was enough seasonal representation to justify it. Aru had promised an advance on their carrot allowance to sweeten the deal.)

Ordinarily, it was the type of group that only formed if they were looking for trouble. But Natsumi had a gentle heart, and so they were just a kind of… diplomatic instrument. The first rule of diplomacy was that you showed the opponent the stick before you hit them with it; if you were lucky, the stick was big enough that you might not have to hit them at all.

She had always spoken softly. Now she had completed the idiom.

As the injured party, Natsumi was calling the shots. But QP, Aru, and the penguins had gradually drifted to the head of the column. QP, with her finely honed nose, was tracking Mei’s last known movements; Red and Blue, their master’s shadows, were relying on their bond as pets.

Aru, as a guardian of children and semi-legal businesswoman, already knew exactly where they’d end up, and was gently steering them towards the warehouse whenever they looked like they’d wander off. She was mostly considering how to get in without revealing her extensive talents at housebreaking to a squad of impressionable teenagers. In the end, she decided she’d just point QP at the door and tell her to get on with it.

At some point, Natsumi had handed out boxed lunches. How she’d made boxed lunches for four mostly human people and an entire fleet of assorted animals – and how she’d concealed them upon her person, when she had no visible knapsack or backpack to store them – was a question Aru would very much like to know the answer to, but the only reply she’d gotten was a sweet smile and a potentially conspiratorial wink.

All in all, it was a bit like being on a company picnic: loud, noisy, most of the people attending didn’t really know each other that well, and there was going to be a lot of violence before they wrapped the whole thing up.

“Do you smell smoke?” QP asked.

The procession ground to a halt. This was the kind of ominous question QP was not allowed to ask, under any circumstances.

“You’re the one with the dog nose,” Syura batted back.

Natsumi, whose senses of smell and taste had been refined by hours in the kitchen, scented the air. “Yes. But it’s not wood smoke… I don’t think it’s a cooking stove.”

They all looked at each other, and took a moment to decide if, collectively, they were the type of people who ran toward burning buildings as opposed to away from them.

“I think,” Natsumi said slowly, “that it might be a clue.”

“I was just thinking the same thing!” QP joined in, nodding her head emphatically. “We should totally check it out.”

Neither of them said anything about Mei being the kind of person who might cause fires to spontaneously happen in her vicinity. At least not out loud.

Aru, who knew how much fire insurance cost for a business premises, sighed but nodded. “We’d better hurry up then. Before our clue goes up in smoke.”

“That was a very good pun, Miss Aru.”

“Thank you.”

Pleasantries dispensed with, they broke into a run.

Or, perhaps more accurately, a stampede.

* * *

Tomato idly stamped out a small fire as she looked around the warehouse. Force of habit, really. Much like Natsumi had accepted Mei would never stop challenging random people to fights, Tomato had accepted her own sister would never stop blowing things up, which usually also set them on fire. She’d learned to live with it, because that was what sisters did. As a result, her jumpsuit might never be the most desirable item in the new Fall fashion line, but it was very much flame retardant.

She was aware, in a dim way, that the blaze in front of her was dangerous. But she was also aware that Yuki was behind her with a gun, and considerably angrier than the fire was. She strode forth as though she were the Terminator and she’d just watched John Connor’s dog poop on her lawn.

Yuki followed right behind her, and Mimyuu brought up the rear with a face flushed by post-explosive bliss. They surveyed the room with practised eyes.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the detective! Looks like you found your man. In record time, too! I ought to leave you a tip!” Yuki crowed when she saw Mei. There was a smile on her face, but it didn’t reach her narrowed eyes. She jerked her gaze sharply at Mimyuu. “This the guy?”

“Sure is, boss.”

“That makes things easy.” The smile disappeared. Yuki bared her fangs in contempt as she pointed to her prey. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, bringing this much attention to yourself – and to us. But it ends _now_.”

The man sniffed. It wasn’t clear how sniffing was going to help him get out of his current situation, but it seemed like a good first step. “I’m sure there’s some way we can settle this where we all come out ahead.”

“Sure there is. Do you want to know how it goes?” Yuki asked theatrically. “Here’s the story: we just so happened to find a kidnapper and a girl inside this old abandoned warehouse, see? So we roughed him up and saved the girl. Now we’re the heroes of the town, the cops aren’t asking questions, and that dumb mutt owes me for bailing out her friends. Easy, ain’t it?”

She turned to her underlings. “Work him over, but keep it clean. We want him in the hospital, not the morgue.”

Tomato grinned. From the same convenient space in which Mimyuu stored an infinite amount of explosives, she extracted a well-worn baseball bat. It might once have had nails in it. It was hard to tell.

Mei locked eyes with her, and sensed a kindred spirit: a girl who would fight anybody for any reason, but _especially_ for her sister. For just a moment, their souls vibrated in a strange and violent harmony.

“Hey! Untie me so I can hit him with the chair! It’s all I want!”

The man looked back as if he’d been bitten by a snake. “I poured my heart out to you!” he hissed.

“Do me a favour and pour your teeth out as well, ya freak!”

He licked his lips nervously as the Waruda approached. Could he outrun them? A look at Yuki and Tomato’s figures told him no. Three on one was bad odds; if they managed to get Mei loose, it would be even worse. He was out of options.

“I hate to do this,” he said, loosening the top button of his shirt. “But it seems it’s time for a distraction.”

With one suspiciously well-practised motion, he tore off his shirt to reveal a wall of well-kept muscle. Mei, upon seeing the sculpted physique of a handsome blue-haired boy, almost forgot she was angry as her mind went back to the pages of her doujin collection. Yuki stopped, her face twisted in pure confusion. Mimyuu, who wasn’t even in the guy’s weight class to begin with, kept her distance.

“Pfft. I’ve got better abs than that,” Tomato said, and swung.

With lightning-quick reflexes he tightened his pecs, hoping to deflect the blow with his hardened muscles. This might have helped, if Tomato hadn’t been swinging for his kneecaps. He hit the floor like a salmon getting slapped out of the air mid-jump by a grizzly bear.

What happened next would become very fuzzy in Mei’s mind, what with the adrenaline and the fire and the lack of proper dinner. But at some point Mimyuu sidled over and undid the ropes, and at that point a chair was picked up and smashed over somebody’s head. One of the Waruda must have done it, she reasoned, when she wasn’t looking.

They were all still kicking him – and, honestly, bonding over the experience a little – when they heard somebody shout: “Fire!”

It seemed like a good thing to shout, all things considered. Fitting for the situation at hand.

Right up until they heard the “...at will!” that immediately followed it.

For a brief second, the entire warehouse lit up with an unearthly rainbow glow.

The glow stayed for a little while. But the warehouse, and everything in it, mostly disappeared in a hail of bullets so violent that even the fire didn’t survive.

There was, however, a single survivor, miraculously untouched: one brave, noble box of hammers that had struck out from its brothers, and now had a tragic superhero backstory of its own.

* * *

She woke up to the smell of penguins, which was largely an amalgam of fish and cowardice. For Mei, it was the most comforting smell in the world. She tried to lurch upright, but was blocked by a stern hand pushing down on her forehead.

“Hey, hey! Don’t get up. Your HP hasn’t fully recovered yet!”

She thought about this particular combination of words, and she thought about the somewhat bony thighs that her head was resting on, and she realised that Syura was giving her an honest-to-god gamer girl lap pillow. She lurched upwards again, with more urgency this time.

She opened her mouth to ask a question. Really, what the question _was_ didn’t matter; there were so many good ones that any would do. But before she could say a word, a fork swooped into her mouth with expert precision. The flavour of white chocolate and raspberry floated across her tongue, and the only sound she could make was an appreciative “mmpfh”.

“It’s so good to see you wake up… Q-chan said she was going to get rid of some of the building so the fire didn’t spread, but it seems we had more firepower than we thought we did…” Natsumi’s voice was soft, gentle, sweet. “I was so worried about you.”

“Nacchan, I – I’m so sorry. For worrying you and, just, y’know, everythi–” she tried to say, but then another bite of cheesecake was presented to her.

“Is it good? Q-chan said you’d bought a cheesecake when you saw her yesterday, and I knew you had your eye on it, so I baked one myself as an apology.”

“I bought that one as an apology to _you_.”

“I don’t need an apology. I never did. All I wanted was for my sister to be safe and sound.”

Mei felt tears starting to form in her eyes, although that might be because she was recently in a very smoky building. It didn’t matter. Natsumi provided what even emergency waffles could not: a cast-iron guarantee that everything was going to be okay.

“Do I get cheesecake?” Syura asked.

“Maybe not _this_ cheesecake. But I’ll think of a good thank-you later.”

“Can you call it a quest reward instead? It feels better if it’s a quest reward.”

“Okay. I’ll get you a ‘quest reward’ soon.”

The world felt peaceful. In the distance, Mei could hear QP and Aru arguing with the police over why completely demolishing a burning warehouse was their duty as law-abiding citizens, and how they had saved three gangsters and a known pervert (which QP was _very_ vociferous about) from the blaze. They seemed to be winning, although no matter how much the dog shouted, the officers refused to put the man in handcuffs and wanted to put him in an ambulance instead.

She hugged her penguins. She hugged her sister. She ate an amount of cheesecake that qualified as a sin in some religions, and she let the world slowly return to its usual shape, content that the whole escapade would make a fantastic article in the school newspaper and would no doubt be mentioned as an aside on one of her sister’s cooking blogs. It was the way it should be.

She never did get around to asking why QP had decided to dress up as a superhero, or demanding proper payment from Yuki for services rendered. But a few weeks later, a somewhat bruised young man walked into her office, to ask her about a boy named Kyupita.

She greeted him, chair in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That ends our story for Natsumi Day 2020! It was a really fun one to work on, and it's been very enjoyable to dip back into the havoc-filled, tongue-in-cheek QPverse world for a while.


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